In what was a very close race in the second round of voting, Nicolas Sarkozy has snatched the Presidency away from Hollande. The UMP headquarters roared in delight for their President while all is quiet in the Hollande HQ. Monseiur Sarkozy released this statement after his victory was announced.

The French people voted for change. The French people voted for a shift in the status quo. The French people voted to take grasp once more of their future. I will work restlessly to ensure that the dreams of the French people will come to fruition

The final results were:

Turnout - 49.9%
Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) - 52.3%
François Hollande (Socialist Party) - 47.7%

Despite the UMP’s candidate winning the Presidential election, their performance in the National Assembly elections did not go so well. The leadership of the UMP decided to make a coalition with the much smaller but extremely popular French Freemason Party who have been campaigning intensely in the last few months. Their alliance proved to be a major blunder for the UMP as they have been reduced to the junior partner in the coalition (albeit by a relatively small margin). To make matters worse for the UMP, their left-wing rivals, the Socialist Party, have managed to snatch the majority of seats in the parliamentary left giving them more seats than the UMP alone.

The results are as follows:

Government
French Freemason Party - 153
UMP - 144
Independents - 3

Other Parties
Socialist Party - 260
Other non-major parties - 17

Is France in a political crisis? What will become of the new government?

How far can you push a country before you've pushed them to far?

That is a question that today has been answered in the USA, tired of the USA constantly spending billions of dollars in wars that don't affect the US millions of citizens have taken to the streets to protest the US' interventionalist policy.

The key catalyst for this seems to have been the deployment of the US aircraft carrier Enterprise to the African coast, a move that has cost the US taxpayer billions of dollars.

As of current the protests have remained peaceful and the President has not commented on them, but these seem to be the first steps towards a far more isolated US of A.

So in the recent few days the question of modern day alliances(MDA's) such as NATO and CTSO has been under consideration by the admins. More specifically the question of whether or not alliances should be kept as in tier or should be completely disbanded as they are currently. Now off course there are advantages and disadvantages to both of these solutions, which I will be summing up here as I see them.

Advantages of Alliances
• 1. Greater Realism.
  
• 2. These alliances make sense from a geopolitical standpoint to all participating countries and as such are likely to return off their own accord.
  
• 3. Serve as a deterent to an all out tier ending war.
  
• 4. They are necessary for many of the more subtle points to a modern day tier, which I personally believe are essential as otherwise we could simply have played in a Victorian RP.
  
• 5. The prevent wars between countries in Europe. Although there might be people who disagree with me here I would like to state that I believe that the simple fact is that a war in Europe is possible between countries such as Spain and Portugal is not only highly unlikely but bordering on obscene. These countries are countries with no real reason to go to war, small issues can easily be dealt with in international courts , territorial issues no longer really have the same punch after not only the world wars but also the various trade agreements that mean that such wars aren't profitable to any one. In addition nationalism in Europe is far too low to lead to open warfare. Now of course I realise that this is RP and as such people want to expand, I simply feel that there should be a better more realistic way for you to expand your countries power which is something that my suggestion which is upcoming will deal with.
Disadvatages of Alliances
• 1.Whilst it is true that alliances serve as a deterent to all out war they also serve as a deterent to any war at all. This leaves players with far fewer options for expansion and by extension active growth and by further extension goals and by further extension things to do in the tier other than constant elections.
  
• 2.As the MDA's currently exist they mean that there is a massive power imbalance in the world, NATO has nearly twice as many points as its closest competitor Russia, and thats with the Russian economy already having been boosted immensely. Further boosts to the Russian economy would be ludicrous as their economy is already 5-10 times larger than real life. And this isn't even taking into account the fact that I wasn't including all of the allies of NATO who aren't in NATO such as Japan,Australia etc.
  
• 3.These alliances also have the supplementary problem that they mean that interventions by these alliances mean that wars between other countries will also become incredibly scarce. Personally as the US I will intervene in most aggresive wars, and with NATO at my back there is virtually no chance for the aggresive party meaning that even in the third world wars are to be highly unlikely. And I don't intervere to ruin the tier or anything like that, I simply feel that that is how the US should be RP'ed as the world policeman especially when conflicts are ill founded with little to no grounds and anybody can see that they are simply imperialistic wars. Now one solution to this is of course simply to actually lay a good groundwork for your wars and not just one announcement and then wow we are now invading that country. But that opens a whole other can of worms, like the fact that that is not necessarily very fun for a lot of people.

When comparing the advantages and disadvantages it becomes clear that neither simply having the Alliances or not having them is an ideal solution. Whilst having them could potentially lead to a quick tier death and not having them leads to so much of the true beauties of Geopolitics in the 21st century being lost.

To be clear , if the only choices are to either have alliances or not to have alliances I believe the admins solution is the better one, simply don't have them. it is the only way in which there is a reasonable possibility of prolonged tier activity. As someone who has tried to start several tiers in the past I am kinda an expert on what kills tiers.


A solution I discussed with Burned yesterday that I believe solves many of these problems is that we do infact implement alliances, but have them be far more restricted in how much of their strength they can use as well as trying to shift the nature of conflicts from the Victorian mindframe, that most RP'ers understandably have, into a more modern mindframe.

First to explain what I mean by that last sentence.

As of current the group and most modern day tiers think of conflicts in terms of territorial gains. Direct territorial gains in another country by your own countries, taking control of their resources and their population. This stands in direct contrast to the nature of most conflicts waged by great powers ever since the end of WW II. Take a moment to think of all of the wars fought by great powers since WWII, in the Cold war neither the US or the USSR ever fought a war for territorial control. Rather wars were fought either for ideological control or economic control. This holds true for all of the great powers. None of them launched any wars to take territorial control over the territory of another country. At most they would fight a war to maintain control over their territory from hungry new post-colonial countries. Or over otherwise useless pieces of territory such as the Falklands.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, "that's nice and all but what does that have to do with the way the tier runs or with alliances."

Simply put the effect of this is that in the victorian mode of thinking wars simply are impossible with MDA's, once your countries direct territory is called into danger then you are going to be quick to call all of your allies and suddently wow WW3. Two weeks later the tier will be dead.

However under the Modern mode of thinking it is suddenly possible to have conflicts between great powers that don't escalate, we get a war, but the status quo doesn't change enough for a rematch to be impossible, so we could even have two three completely different conflicts going on at the same time between the same powers.

This deals with the first disadvantage, however it might in many ways compound the 3rd disadvantage of alliances and it doesn't do anything to deal with the second.

It also comes with some of its own problems, most notably how to get the players to play along, why would they even go to war at all now if it doesn't even help with map painting. And how does it completely stop the massive interventions of super-alliances. And why would bigger countries even care?

To deal with the issue of why players should go to war I feel that it is important that we remember that the reason you go to war is to gain an advantage or to settle a grudge. And as such its important that areas with grudges exist and are detached enough from old alliances to allow them to have more or less balanced fights.

Luckily such an area already exists in Africa and the Middle East. Here we have aprox. 50-70 countries that all have good reasons to go to war and good reasons to have civil wars, to conquer territory as well as being politically unstable enough to have rapid ideological shifts.

This would of course mean that having players in Africa and the Middle East who are not afraid of going to war becomes of great importance.

The next question then becomes how do we get the big players to play along.

Well for one thing they could receive promises from backed parties, in the case of human on AI wars the admin would then be responsible for making promises. These promises could be anything of course but they would usually be promises of joining international alliances with the other party or providing the other party resources(gdp) upon victory. To make the system more worthwhile the party receiving the resources will get more then is sent. For example if liberia pays the russians 1000 points the russians would get 2000.Also the conquering party in a war would get the GDP of the parts they conquered.

Whilst the above does provide a reason to start and get involved in wars, ore specifically in wars that are likely enough to happen in the realm of realism it still leaves the second and third disadvantages unadressed.

To adress these I propose the heavy limiting of how many forces your country can send to another part of the world. This will usually be done via nation traits such as germany having "Nazi Legacy" which limits them to for example 3 divisions, and 100 planes per country.

This can be balanced in such a manner that countries such as Russia will be able to deploy about as many troops to each of these countries as NATO without actually alterning the balance of power. It can also made to be changable with the right circumstances and polical will. Like at the very start Russia would have "legacy of the cold war" but could easily remove this under the right polical leadership, and as the russian alliance(which to make the tier more balanced will have an advantage in the early years due to weak political will in the West.) grows stronger so too can the West become more united, until such a time as the two are truelly equal.

Now how it should be balanced is a technical detail that can easily be sorted out later, what is important now is simply the base idea from which this balance will be born.

What this means is that it suddenly becomes possible for the status quo between countries to change slowly and over time as these countries now fight for the ever growing resources in the middle east and Africa.(which would also now be afforded rapid GDP growth if these nations decide to invest into it) starting civil wars via intelligence agencies, planting evidence to convince the world that their intervention is justified etc etc..



So when I rambled the solution the first time to Burned he pointed out that he believed that the system had a key problem in the following area.

It left medium landlocked countries in Europe without anything to do.

A point that I understand and sympathise with. I believe the conversation went something like this.

Originally posted by burned:

Burned: But the whole idea about this rp was
Burned: you know
Burned: "Rebirth of War"
Because Why Not?: True, and in that case its probably best to throw out the alliances
Because Why Not?: as with them war simply wont happen or will be boring
Burned: I think we need a midground between alliances and no alliances
Burned: your system is close to what i would want
Because Why Not?: as I can promise you that I as the US will be intervening in every retarded aggresive move and well people simply wont attack under those cases, and I dont do it to spite fun or anything I simply do it because the RP'er and realist in me simple cannot stand countries trying to randomly attack other countries without so much as a proper excuse

he had more to say but unfortunately my steam chat doesn't go that far back. To summarise his argument however he raised the question of what happens when for example slovakia and the czechs wanna reunite the good old fashioned way., or if spain wants to conquer portugal or something like that.

Points which I understand but ultimately disagree with as I thoroughly believe that these wars arent possible in a modern scenario without years of tensions building.

nonetheless I have put them here for your consideration.



I suggest and altered form of alliances with the tier moving towards a new manner of thing about wars, this announcement should serve as a discussion ground for this, where potential changes and disagreements can be voiced, I am not an admin as of yet and as such this shouldnt in any way be considered official. Should the system receive praise we can look into making it official, otherwise well it can die.

This is a followup to my latest post
Today Harvey Beaumont has finally announced the official rebellion from all current parties in parliament and the formation of the new Centrist Union of Britain. Surprisingly, many MPs joined Beaumont forming a new, strong and united front for centrism. Here is the speech Beaumont gave today:

People of Britain, I stand before you today as a man who no longer cares for his own position. I have lost my seat in the House of Lords long ago and my respected position in the Conservative party as of last week. I have nothing to loose - I am like a renaissance explorer heading to the worlds edge - I am about to discover a new world of possibilities for my country. I hope you all are willing to join me on this voyage.

In my hand here I have a full list of all the MPs who have joined the centrist union. And let me tell you, it's by far more than I expected. When I came up with this idea of a rebellion, I expected at most 10 MPs to join my side, however this number is more than 10 times greater. I also expected them to all be some of my supporters from my old party but we have MPs from many parties all around the Uk. All I can say is that I am amazed and very thankful. Now that we exist - we can cleanse British politics of corruption, fraud and radicalism. I will now read out all the names of the MPs who joined the Centrist Union - I'm sure all you journalists are waiting for this moment - the exact number of seats, well let me tell you. We have 102 seats thus making us the third largest party in parliament.
*Beaumont reads the names*

Before the rebellion the House of Commons looked as following:

After the rebellion things changed drastically:

The conservatives still remain the biggest party and with their coalition still up they are quite a bit ahead of labour. Some labour MPs say a coalition with the CUB would be a good idea but Beaumont outright refuses a coalition with anybody. He believes a fresh election must be called immediately as no laws as of now can pass.

The British parliament is more divided then ever but a new star arises? If an election does happen, will Beaumont cement his position as a major power in parliament or will he loose his seats to the traditional parties?